


Sunday Afternoon: Sleep with Molly Hooper

by ll_again



Series: Phases of Domestication [3]
Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: F/M, Very much fluff, do not consume on an empty stomach, it will make you ill
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-08-10
Updated: 2018-08-11
Packaged: 2019-06-24 16:13:37
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 5,014
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15634197
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ll_again/pseuds/ll_again
Summary: Molly canceled their date at the last minute, but no one messes with Jim's precisely organized calendar and gets away with it.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> If you are keeping track, this takes place between the first two scenes of Mr Sex. Part 2 is more or less finished, minus some edits, and incoming in the next day or so.

The severe tongue-lashing that Jim had composed on his way over died in his throat the second she opened the door. Molly, to put it delicately, looked like hell.

"Jim?" she said in surprise, bracing her weight heavily on the door. "Didn't you get my text?"

Irritatingly, he was going to have to assassinate Moran, who had counseled patience when Molly's message asking for a raincheck had arrived. The man would be insufferable when he discovered that he'd been right to say that Molly wouldn't just blow off their date without good reason.

"Yeees?" Jim said, drawing the word out to give himself an extra second to think. "I came to see if you needed anything?"

Molly drooped even further, looking up at him through her lashes with a pinched expression, clearly not believing a word. "I'm really not up for anything today, Jim," she said.

He slid his eyes to the side for a moment, still stalling. Molly mostly sounded tired – exhausted, really – but there was an undertone that promised all manner of pain if he crossed her. Maybe even dismemberment.

It was a bit of a turn on.

" _Do_ you need something?" he said, half just muttering to himself. Odd that he couldn't pin down what was wrong with her. Food poisoning seemed the most likely, although that didn't quite fit his observations.

Which was a shame. Arson always put him in a good mood, and it would have been a joy to have an excuse to set fire to the Barts canteen.

Maybe he would anyway, simply on principle. And Seb could just cork it with his 'property damage only for a purpose' claptrap; _he'd_ never had to eat there.

Molly shook her head. "It's just cramps," she said, flushing brightly. "I feel like I've been punched in the cunt by a thousand angry toddlers."

Jim flicked his eyes over her solemnly. He couldn't see why she was embarrassed, considering the things they'd gotten up to over the last several months. But even her embarrassment was outweighed by the sheer effort it was taking her to stay upright. If she leaned any harder on the door, she was bound to fall over.

"May I come in?" The question felt strange in his mouth, unaccustomed as he was to asking permission to enter.

"I can't entertain you today, Jim," she said, even as she moved back, granting him entrance to the flat. "I'm just going to sleep; you'll be bored."

He stepped inside, taking the door and pushing it shut, leaving Molly without something to lean on. She rallied and kept herself upright, but only just, listing a bit to the side. It didn't escape Jim's notice that she happened to be leaning in his direction. Perhaps she meant to topple him as well, if she went down.

"Hm." Jim let his hand span over the small of her back, nudging her lightly towards the bedroom. "Did you take something?"

"Yeah," Molly said. She stopped when they reached the kitchen, leaned back a little into the press of his fingers. "That feels good," she said with the same breathless, open commentary she tended towards when he was between her thighs.

Jim stepped a little closer, digging in his fingers. His lips brushed her hair, and Jim's eyes slid closed as he breathed in. She smelled … not bad, but different with none of her normal smells clinging to her. No lotion or makeup or morgue smells today; just Molly. The sort of mundane scent that would be the most familiar after ten years of waking up beside her.

An odd thought, that. He enjoyed fucking Molly Hooper, enjoyed their little dates even, but … domestic bliss?

Didn't really sound like his thing.

"Oh, not so hard," Molly said, bracing a hand on the back of one of her barstools. "It's not muscle pain, I'm just achy."

Softening his touch, Jim dropped a kiss into her hair. "Go lie down," he said. "I'll rub your back."

She hesitated. "I'm just going to make a cup of tea first, as I'm up."

"I'll do it."

Molly turned around, eyes flittering up to meet his. "You don't have to do that."

But strangely enough, he wanted to. "Bed, Molly-my-bell," Jim said, turning her around and giving her a gentle shove.

Obediently, she started to totter off, paused, and looked over her shoulder. "I want chamomile," she said, pointing towards the cabinet over her kettle. "With honey. It's-"

"I know where you keep it."

"…okay. And-"

"I am capable of making tea," Jim said with exaggerated patience. He might have been annoyed, but Molly's skepticism was far too amusing. She waffled for a moment longer before she glanced longingly towards her room and seemed to come to the conclusion that lying down was more tempting than a properly made cuppa.

Jim watched as she moved slowly down the hall. It was like something out of a nature documentary, with all the dramatic tension of a wounded animal dragging its dying carcass across the desert.

"Are you going to make it?" he asked.

Four feet from where she started, Molly decided to take a break, leaning on the wall with one hand. "Is crawling undignified?"

"Generally." Jim crossed his arms, watching to see what she'd do.

He couldn't see her face, but Jim could well imagine her expression as she squared her shoulders and shuffled down the hall, projecting determination with every step.

Molly had been quite wrong. This wasn't boring at all.

Jim hummed _Danse Macarbe_ while he shimmied around the kitchen, flicking on the kettle, finding cups and teabags and milk and honey. While the tea brewed, he made a quick detour to the living room to say hello to Junior, who was snoozing on the radiator, clearly unconcerned by Mummy's monthly troubles. A few minutes later, he was tracing her steps to the bedroom, a mug in each hand.

Molly was propped up by a mound of pillows, an extra one under her knees, and a hot water bottle set low on her abdomen. "Oh, thank you," she said, extending hands with grabby fingers until Jim passed her the mug of chamomile tea. Molly took a long sip, closing her eyes and sighing contentedly into her mug. "This is good."

"Of course it is," Jim said, taking a large swallow of his own tea before setting the cup on the dresser to shrug off his jacket. "I'm a _genius_." He drew out the last word into a long drawl. Hooking his fingers over the knot on his tie, he pulled it open and off, coiling the length of silk into a roll and dropping it on his discarded jacket.

Molly watched him over the rim of her mug with a strange look in her brown eyes and a smile curving the corners of her mouth. "You don't have to stay, Jim," she said, no longer sounding on the verge of violence. "I'm going to finish my tea and go to sleep. I'm so tired…"

"Aren't you always?" Jim said, unbuttoning his trousers. "When you start, I mean."

"Mm. Not like this." The assertion was punctuated with a timely yawn. She set her mug on the bedside table, watching him step out of his trousers with half-lidded eyes. "Nice pants."

Jim smirked. The silk boxers were patterned with skulls, a relatively new acquisition that he'd bought with Molly in mind. He unbuttoned his shirt from the bottom up and shrugged it off, leaving him in only his undershirt and boxers. Picking up his teacup and his phone, he sauntered over to the bed, fully aware of Molly's sleepy gaze following him the whole way.

"Budge up," he said as he slipped into the bed.

Molly passed over her extra pillows and settled onto her side next to him, her forehead just touching his shoulder. "You really don't have to stay," she murmured.

"I do actually. It's written on my schedule. 'Sunday afternoon: sleep with Molly Hooper'." Jim lifted his arm over her shoulders. "Come here."

With a few touches, Jim guided her so she was draped over him, her knee slotted between his, and his hands in position to make good on his promise to rub her back. Molly moaned quietly, wiggling until she found just the perfect position to bonelessly relax.

"Sorry in advance if I bleed on you," she mumbled, clearly not planning to be very sorry at all.

Jim hummed under his breath. "Won't be the first time." Molly made a sleepy, disbelieving noise, and he amended, "Yes, yes, usually it's real blood, not menstrual."

Molly laughed, sort of. A puff of air hit his collarbone before her breathing slowed and evened out in sleep. Fetching his phone off the side table, Jim settled in, content to be trapped under Molly's weight while he remotely wreaked havoc around the world.

It wasn't the Sunday afternoon he'd planned – Jim did so love finding fancy places to take Molly for a late brunch so she could horrify society ladies by actually _eating_ – but it wasn't bad either. Molly's bedroom was quaint and kitschy like its owner, but cozy in a way that his own, which was easily twice the size of this room, could never hope to be. Jim found himself wondering why they never spent much time at Molly's and didn't think to question how comfortable he found this rather boring bit of domesticity.

An hour later, the neighbors started thumping against the wall behind their heads in a steady, unmistakable rhythm, answering Jim's idle question, and much to his amusement. But as the noise continued far longer than thirty seconds – a number he'd picked as a more than generous estimate of the neighbor's stamina, having encountered him on a prior visit to Molly's – irritation starting niggling between his eyebrows.

A particularly loud thunk, accompanied by a high-pitched wail, stirred Molly to wakefulness. She groaned, pressing her face into Jim's shoulder.

"Oh, for fuck's sake. It's the middle of the day." Any other time, Jim wouldn't have let Molly's unintentional pun pass unremarked, but her distress was distracting.

Curiously so.

Jim smoothed a hand over Molly's hair, an impotent rage boiling in his gut while his lightening quick mind calculated and discarded one option after another. A swift, violent retaliation would only further upset the woman in his arms. And that was besides the fact that he had to tread carefully so as to not draw untoward attention. Molly would be … somewhat unhappy, if a (staged) murder-suicide next door ruined the two months of hard work that she'd put into keeping their affair secret from one overly-nosy 'detective'.

The noise ratcheted up a notch, prompting Molly to roll onto her back with a strangled moan, leaving their legs tangled together. She grabbed blindly for a pillow, pressing it to her face with both hands.

Jim took a moment to get control of his smile, then shifted onto his side, lifting up a corner of Molly's pillow to peek underneath.

"You do realize it's not actually possible to smother yourself," he said with all seriousness.

Molly's response was muffled but clearly not amused.

Tucking his face under the pillow with her, Jim snuggled closer, draping an arm over Molly's waist. "Did you just tell me to 'fuck off'?" he said, just barely holding back a laugh.

No one had done that in … actually Carl Powers might have been the last.

Molly turned her head, her nose bumping his. "Yes," she said, contrite. She even sniffed a little.

At the sound, Jim's stomach swooped uncomfortably. He shifted, rubbing their noses together again.

Eskimo kisses, he thought. How trite.

But Molly sighed – a slight, pleased little exhale that, despite it's lack of volume, completely drowned out the noise from the neighbors – and Jim did it one more time.

Molly made the same noise, just as the neighbors finished on a shout. Conversely, Molly tensed as soon silence fell, but Jim didn't have a chance to question her before the couple next door started yelling.

"They're awful," she said, despondent. "I swear, when they're not fucking they're fighting."

A half-formed promise of grotesque dismemberment died on his lips as inspiration struck, and Jim shot bolt upright, gathering together the obscene amount of pillows Molly kept on the bed. Shushing her impatiently, he pressed a hand to her shoulder to keep her from sitting up, then lay back down and started stacking the pillows around their heads, igloo like.

Molly started giggling as soon as his plan became apparent, and didn't stop until he drew the blanket at their waist up over the makeshift fort, sealing them in, and snuggled down next to her.

Cocooned under a mound of pillows and blankets, the argument next door muffled into white noise … it was almost like being home again.

_knees bumping against his brother's trading snatches of songs stepfather screaming a stark harmony_

In the dark, close surroundings, Molly curled her fingers into his shirt, nuzzling her nose into the hollow under his jaw like a kitten. The finely tuned, perpetual motion machine that made up Jim's brain whirred gently to a halt.

"Don't stop," Molly murmured, her voice buzzing pleasantly against his Adam's apple.

Dimly, Jim realized he'd been humming _Molly Bawn_. Licking his dry lips, Jim blinked rapidly several times while he searched for a more suitible tune, finally settling on _Óró_ _S_ _é_ _D_ _o_ _B_ _heatha '_ _B_ _haile_.

He actually rather fancied Molly as a modern day Gráinne Mhaol; she didn't look it, but Molly could be as vicious as a hellcat when provoked. A smirk curved his lips at the thought of Molly, wild and ferocious, commanding a vengeful army to slaughter her enemies.

A few lines into the song, Jim realized Molly had dropped off again. He continued on anyway, humming the chorus in broken fragments as his heavy eyes drooped shut, before he fell silent, joining Molly in slumber.


	2. Chapter 2

A loud thump jerked Jim back to wakefulness. Every muscle seized as his subconscious prepared to bolt, but he held himself rigidly still, assessing his surroundings. Somehow, the mound of pillows he'd built around them had remained intact while they napped, so it took him a moment to figure out where he was.

"Jim?" The tone of the query suggested that it wasn't the first attempt to get his attention. He grunted an answer, and Molly's hand rubbed along his hipbone soothingly. "'s okay," she said. "'s just my asshole neighbors."

Jim flexed his stiff muscles, willing them to relax, and only then realized that he was clutching Molly against his chest, one hand curled protectively at the base of her skull. He made another noise, not yet ready to make words while sleep still dragged at his edges.

Molly shifted, movements limited by his arms banded around her. "Um… sorry, can you let go? I need to pee."

Obediently, Jim loosened his grip, but Molly didn't move right away. Her fingers found his face and brushed his lips before she touched a chaste kiss there. "Thank you for staying," she said shyly before wiggling out of their fort, careful not to disturb what he'd built.

Jim remained in place until the bathroom door shut behind Molly, leaving him alone in her bedroom. He sat up, pushing pillows out of the way and rubbing his bleary eyes. Disorientation shrouded him, blurring all his senses.

He couldn't remember the last time he'd fallen asleep next to someone else. Probably not since he was a child.

For that matter, it was rare for him to sleep anywhere but his penthouse flat or an occasional, well-secured hotel room. Despite his flippant remark about the day's plans earlier, Jim had never had any intention of sleeping here, and he didn't know what to make of the fact that he'd done so.

Jim pushed his palms into his eye sockets, pressing to the point of pain before he let go and dragged his fingers through his hair. The silence from the neighbor's flat was deafening, only to be broken by the sound of Molly's bath starting to fill.

Clambering off the bed, Jim flicked the blankets back into place, twitching them to smooth out the wrinkles, and neatly stacked Molly's numerous pillows, fastidiously tweaking the arrangement until they resembled a magazine spread.

Jim drifted to the bathroom door, laying a palm flat against the wood. His eyes flickered everywhere, at everything around him that was Molly Hooper.

He liked it. All of it. (Almost all of it, anyway; some of her twee knick-knacks were so asinine as to be downright offensive.) It went against every expectation, but an afternoon letting Molly drool on his shoulder while she slept away her cramps was at least as satisfying as an afternoon spent fucking her senseless.

Well. That _was_ a turn up, wasn't it?

Letting his hand fall from the door, Jim returned to the pile of clothes he'd discarded earlier. Piece by piece, he pulled the fabric over his skin, straightened his cuffs and collar. His fingers wove his tie into a precise knot around his neck while his thoughts scattered out of his grip.

The bathroom door clicked open, and Molly stepped out wrapped in a puff of steam and a fluffy towel. "Sorry about that," she said, flushed from more than the heat of her recent bath. "I needed to… um…"

Jim let his gaze linger on her – pink cheeks, hair loose and mussed and wet at the ends, hands clutched at her chest to keep her towel in place, as if he wasn't already well acquainted with what was under there.

Something deep in his psyche stirred and settled snugly into place. A wisp of a smile touched his lips, almost immediately morphing into a grin.

"Clean up the carnage?"

And just like that, his disordered thoughts snapped back into clean lines. In that moment, he felt immortal, not unlike the way he'd felt watching Carl Powers go stiff and sink to the bottom of the pool. Except…

Molly's face scrunched up with such a depth of delight that her first instinct was to try and contain it. "Yes," she said, eyes twinkling merrily.

Except … he hadn't _taken_ anything from Molly. Quite the contrary.

Jim tucked his hands into his trouser pockets, rocking his weight back onto his heels. "Feeling better, then?"

Molly nodded. "A bit, yes."

Jim lifted a hand out of his pocket, holding it out silently, and Molly gravitated to him, feet carrying her in his direction without any thought to doing otherwise. He caught her by the shoulder, curving his palm over the bare skin there, satisfaction humming low in his gut at even that mild amount of contact.

"I need to get tampons," she said absently as she reached out and adjusted the lapel of his jacket, then dragged her fingers over the fine wool, eyes narrowed in cat-like contentment.

He pressed a kiss to her temple, filling his lungs with her clean, neutral Molly-smell. "I'll do it," Jim said.

Because, strangely enough, he wanted to.

Another door slammed at the neighbor's. Molly huffed in a sort of resigned exasperation; it puffed against his neck.

"And I will take care of that," Jim continued without missing a beat.

Tilting her chin up, he touched his lips to hers, sliding the kiss into a smoldering thing full of promise when she opened with a small noise. But a moment later, Molly went still. And reluctantly, Jim backed off, reining in his wandering hands first, returning them to his pockets before he, ever so slowly, removed his mouth from hers.

"Sorry," Molly whispered when there was still only a fraction of space between them. "I'm really not in the mood to … to-"

"Do _not_ be sorry," Jim snapped, cutting her off. His gut was writhing at the discomfit threaded through her apology. He did so enjoy it when Molly begged, but this… "I don't like it."

No. This he didn't like at _all_.

She looked up at him, face flushed and lips swollen, brown eyes glittering with concern. Jim wanted to devour her. He wanted to separate her into pieces and store them all inside himself so he could keep her with him always.

Her fingers brushed at his lapel, smoothing out the crease she'd left by gripping it during their kiss. "It's just… I wasn't trying to give you the wrong idea."

"Molly-my-bell." Jim pulled his hands out of his pockets again, holding her face still between them. "You can kiss me and let it be just a kiss," he said. "That's the point of this."

The words were meant to be nothing more than trite; a pithy reassurance that didn't mean anything, really. But hearing them aloud, they resonated in a way that gave him pause.

What _was_ the point of dating Molly Hooper?

Molly colored brightly – as he'd hoped – and the worry left her, only to be replaced by a thoughtful and almost devilish furrow between her brows. "So, can I kiss you again, then?" she asked, widening her eyes into perfectly round innocence.

Jim's mouth dropped open a little. He had to swallow before he could say, " _Yes_."

He just caught the flash of her teeth as she grinned before surging up. The wild kiss settled and slowed into a luscious dance. Molly leaned her whole body against him, the lingering drops of water from her bath wicked off her skin into the wool of his suit. Jim wound his arms around her waist, keeping her there. Kissing her back.

Sweetly, even. It was vile.

She stopped when he would have carried on, so Jim slid his hands up her spine and tilted his head back, eyes sweeping the ceiling. He took a deep breath in an attempt to slow the rapid pattering in his chest. "Let's go out," he said. "You should eat something."

Molly tucked her face into his neck with a neutral noise. "I'm not really that hungry."

Jim gave up on being _noble_ – wasn't really his style anyway – and licked the last lingering drops of water off of Molly's bare shoulder, pulling her hair out of the way to sweep his tongue up her neck.

"There's that bakery you like," he said hotly into her ear, smirking when she shuddered. "They have chocolate pastries and chamomile tea, and," he moved back, reluctantly, but he wanted to see her, "we'll get _obscenely_ comfortable on that couch and offend the little old church ladies with our excessive PDA."

Molly perked up at that, unfurling like a wicked flower basking in the promised delights of chocolate and social improprieties. "Oh, that sounds _lovely_."

"Excellent," Jim said, more than pleased at the way she'd received his suggestion. Releasing her at last, he nudged her towards the dresser. "Get dressed. And I'll see about having someone in to clean up while we're out."

He had a very efficient team whose sole purpose was clearing out flats (along with their occupants). It was one of his more lucrative side-ventures. And if anyone asked Molly about her suddenly vanished neighbors, she'd just demonstrated that she was more than capable of opening her eyes extra wide and affecting the innocent explanation that she hadn't had much conversation with the couple and how sorry she was she didn't know anything about what might have happened to them.

Molly paused in the midst of retrieving her ugliest pair of trousers from the drawer, but she continued to dress and Jim didn't think anything of it until she finally spoke up. "Jim," Molly said, her back still to him as she adjusted her shirt. "I don't want you to do anything to my neighbors."

For a long moment, Jim stared at her, outright gaping, until she turned around and he had to get it together right quick.

"I mean it," she said, quietly and in a tone brooked no argument.

Not that he was about to let that stop him. "Molly…" He had to pause to dig his fingers into his forehead, trying to ease the tension there. "This is my _job_ ," he said, dropping his hand and rocking back on his heels. "All these boring people bring me their boring problems and I fix it for them. What is the use of being my girlfriend if you aren't going to take advantage of my services?"

Molly just stared at him, mouth set in a firm line, and crossed her arms under her breasts.

"Not that _you're_ boring, Molly-my-bell," Jim added quickly, holding out his hands in supplication.

She didn't seem impressed with his correction. "I don't want you to hurt my neighbors, Jim."

A wide, relieved grin broke out on Jim's face. "Is that all?" He stepped towards her, cupping her shoulders and pressing a loud kiss to her temple. "That's very simple, then. I won't hurt them."

Molly lifted her face to look him dead in the eye. "Does that mean you'll sedate them or something before bashing their heads in?"

How did she do that? _She was always doing that_.

Jim brushed back her hair, lingering as he weighed the heavy mass of silken strands that twined through his fingers. " _Obviously_ I wouldn't have their heads bashed in," he said smoothly. "Makes far too much of a mess, forensically."

He very nearly missed Molly's smirk, she clamped down on it so fast. "No, of course not." Her arms wiggled up between them so she could cup his face between both palms. "Jim," she said, all too serious. "You've been really lovely, and I _do_ appreciate the offer, it's just…"

"You don't approve." Jim didn't bother trying to keep the sneer out of his voice.

Because what was the point? Of any of it, for that matter – tea and pillow-forts and soppy kisses. There weren't enough sleepy Sunday afternoons between here and the end of the world to make up the differences between them.

Oh, he could drag her down into the mud. Dirty her up, and easily enough. He could corrupt Mother Theresa if he put his mind to it; mousy Molly Hooper was hardly a challenge. But… he didn't _want_ that.

And he didn't know why.

"No!" Molly exclaimed, halting Jim's darkening thoughts in their tracks. He narrowed his eyes, focusing on her with great interest. She colored a bit, but powered on. "I mean, I don't approve, not really, but that's not why I don't want you to get rid of the neighbors."

Jim tilted his head curiously. He actually had no idea where Molly was going with this, and that in itself was a novel experience.

She smoothed her hands over his shoulders, cut her eyes down and to the side as she shyly admitted, "Actually, I was hoping we could … well. Show them how it's done."

It took him longer than a moment to compose a reply to that, but in Jim's defense, most of his blood had been rerouted quite a distance from his brain. "You want to get revenge on your neighbors by having louder sex than they do?"

Molly lifted her chin, sniffing haughtily. "And better. Obviously."

"Obviously," Jim echoed.

The last scraps of the sudden storm of melancholy that had nearly overtaken him swept out as quickly as it had blown in. And in the settled quiet left behind, Jim saw the answer clear as day.

This was just it, wasn't it? Even though Molly Hooper was the very picture of plain, ordinary, boring, she wasn't any of that. She wasn't ordinary at all. Because she really was – so _improperly_ – excited about putting on a vengeful show for her horrid neighbors. So much so that she honestly enjoyed the prospect of that more than the idea of simply being rid of them, even if they were to leave on their own.

Everyone – even Sherlock, in the end – was so simply laid out; straight lines and sharp angles. Easy to navigate. But Molly was all twists and turns underneath that disingenuous exterior. And Jim was delighted by the prospect of finding each one, exploring every clever, unpredictable path they would lead him down.

He rather thought such a task just might take him years. Decades, maybe.

In a sudden flash, Jim realized what his body and his subconscious (and that smug fuck, Sebastian Moran) had known since the first encounter with the incomparable Molly Hooper. He wanted nothing more than to spend years – decades, the rest of his life – letting her take him on the journeys he'd never be able find on his own.

It wasn't really domestic bliss he had in mind, but it was … something. Jim didn't think there was a word for the thing they'd have together, because they were both so extraordinary that it was certain to be something no one had ever seen before or would again.

"Jim?" Molly said, curiosity coloring her voice beautifully.

Realizing his fanciful imaginings had bloomed into a smile, Jim wiped it away and carefully tucked all the tendrils of the warm, eager anticipation safe inside himself, where he could take them out and bask in them later.

"Next Sunday, then?" Jim said, pulling his phone out of his pocket. "Your neighbors are always in on Sunday afternoons."

Molly didn't question how he knew when her neighbors tended to be around. But then, she was always doing that. Her eyes lit up and she pressed her lips together, nodding eagerly.

Pulling up his calendar, Jim didn't think twice about nuking his scheduled meeting in favor of Molly. It was only bound to be worth a few million quid, and he'd dumped far more than that for far less of a good reason.

That done, Jim pocketed his phone, satisfied that his imminent future was in hand. And in the present, he had a dreadful, delightful girl who needed a chocolate filled pastry and an opportunity to engage in some vindictive PDA.

"Shall we?" His insides still humming, Jim threw an arm over Molly's shoulders and led them towards the door.

**Author's Note:**

> In case you were curious, Molly Bawn and Óró Sé Do Bheatha 'Bhaile are Irish folk songs. [Molly Bawn](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a5RAnVWN_2c) is about a young man who accidentally shoots his lover during a rainstorm, thinking she's a swan. [Óró Sé Do Bheatha 'Bhaile](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uwxQvmepyyA) is a rebel song about a savior returning to Ireland. In the modern version, the savior is [Gráinne Mhaol](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grace_O%27Malley), an Irish folk figure based off of a historical 16th century Irish noblewoman who controlled her own lands and fought against British rule, often via piracy.


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